Spray Boom

Attached is the walking boom that I use for turf and bare ground applications. I normally use AI nozzles in the boom. The next photo is the Solo 433 power sprayer and the 23L 7676-24 gun, with pressure regulator. That is what I use if the area is small or I am "spot treating". There is an XR Teejet fan tip on the end of the wand. Lastly, the double nozzles on a swivel are what I use for spraying shrubs, hedges, short trees and nursery stock. I have the discs from DCER-2 all the way up to DCER-8 and the matching cores. Cone angle, volume and hollow or solid cone patterns are all determined by which disc and core are installed. This set up sprays a very high pressure mist that penetrates dense foliage and due to the adjustable angle of the spray head, it is easy to spray under leaves.

Nice grass greendoc !!! Reminds me of what my yard used to look like until I moved into the country. Now I'm lucky to be able to mow our 8.5 acres once a week!! I still have my reel mower though, never know when I might put in a putting green!!

I really like the idea of a walking boom for bare ground applications. We do a lot of oil field tank batteries, and some of the dikes around the tanks range from 2ft.- 7ft. tall. It would make it very nice to be able to cover them with one swipe, instead of the normal waving of the gun back and forth. I have seen some home made ones that have wheels on them, but to me they could be a bit akward in tight areas.

Thats a nice powered bp sprayer too. I often thought I would like one of them when treating lawns with specialty chems like drive, sedgehammer, and revolver late in the season. Seems like you always have one of those yards that you pick up late in the season that is loaded with everything, and you just don't want to mix up a "hot cocktail" in the ride-on or skid.

Does any one know what kind of grass that is. That is zoysia "El Toro", cut at 3/8" with a reel mower. This lawn has been on my program for 12 months straight. 1/2 lb N, 1/4 lb K + micronutrients every month. No pre-m, Dimension or Barricade is ever used on this lawn. Weeds are controlled by keeping the sod tight. There is no thatch because the lawn is always mowed at the correct height and with the correct type of mower.

Because the boom is made from PVC nipples, you could probably configure one that would allow you to spray the entire embankment from one side. I forgot to take a picture of what I use to treat ditchbanks or any other area that I can only walk on one side only. I do not like boomless nozzles for bare ground or lawn weed control. I am frequently applying potent herbicides that will destroy everything down wind, Think metsulfuron, Arsenal or Oust XP. I do not want any of that drifting off target.

That regulator I use allows me to set a pressure from 1-100PSI. There is no drift when spraying from the boom or single nozzle gun. BTW, the unregulated output from the Solo 433 is 425PSI. Because of this and the fact that no one thinks to put on a secondary regulator, most people understandably shy away from using this for lawns or herbicides. My Maruyama dealer told me, people have tried the MS074 and returned the machine because the unregulated pressure is too high. Everyone is used to the ****-poor output from a hand sprayer. I use either the Solo or a Maruyama MS074 for all of my applications. There are no properties I currently maintain that cannot be efficiently covered by one of the machines. One filling is just about 7 gallons or 7000 sq ft of coverage. This weekend, I am flying to one of the outer islands to spray a 3/4 acre lawn for another landscaper.

What you said about a hot tank mix is so true. I get lawns from hell on a regular basis. I am the last stop before a RoundUp and resod. The first time I treat a lawn, it has everything you can think of in it because proper weed management and fertilization were never done on the lawn. I would never put an MSMA, simazine, Image, 2,4-D and Banvel martini in a 200 gallon sprayer. That would be a colossal pain to wash out so it is safe to use on something other than a bermuda or zoysia lawn. My sprayers can be washed out on the lawn that I just treated as specified and required by the DOA. They do not like people loading or rinsing out sprayers anywhere other than the site of use allowed by the product label. Why? A place where mixing, loading and cleaning always is done can easily become a point source ground water contaminant site. The legacy left behind by the now defunct sugar and pineapple growers is sites leaching atrazine, simazine, bromacil, diuron and Velpar into the groundwater, all from their central mixing sites.

Wow, that is zoysia? Nice!! I have never seen it cut that low. Most of the zoysia lawns we treat are mowed to high. Do you think it is a more disease/drought tolerant turf than the dwarf bermuda's? I treat some riviera lawns, and they are extremely tight & dense. Not much weed competition in those lawns. I know there are different varieties of the zoysia, but we just don't see very much of it around here.

I agree about the boomless nozzles with bare ground control. We have to deal with quite a bit of wind, and a lot of the locations we spray are smack dab in the middle of a wheat field. That is a good idea to make the boom out of pvc, seems like it would be light weight and resistant to the bare ground chems. lasting a lot longer.

That is one of my pet peeves. When zoysia or bermuda is mowed high it gets thatchy or fluffy, then someone trying to push PC lawn care says "you are fertilizing too much." True, if you starve zoysia, it survives and does not grow more than an inch or two in 12 months. However that lawn is also the color of straw most of the time. I do not get paid to make a client's lawn to look like straw. I give a lawn enough N to maintain color and density and insist it is mowed correctly. The way most fine lawns in Hawaii ended up being zoysia is in the 1990's most of the bermuda developed Take all patch. Homeowners were forced to resod. I think hybrid bermuda is one of the most disease susceptible grasses. If it is not Take all, it is dollar spot or leaf spot infecting it.

I spray liquid fertilizer through my boom all the time. That stuff is corrosive. I think a bare ground mix cannot nearly be as bad. Note the threaded caps on the end. That way, I can flush out the boom completely. I remove the caps, push water through, then remove nozzles and screens to clean those, put water through the nozzle bodies as well. Never had a problem with cross contamination. My bare ground sites are not far from landscaped areas. One of them is in a nursery. I am treating the roads and walk paths going through the nursery. Remember that there is no such thing as a 0-5 MPH wind day here and I do not spray on the rare day it is dead calm due to the danger of vapor damage.

Attached is the walking boom that I use for turf and bare ground applications. I normally use AI nozzles in the boom. The next photo is the Solo 433 power sprayer and the 23L 7676-24 gun, with pressure regulator. That is what I use if the area is small or I am "spot treating". There is an XR Teejet fan tip on the end of the wand. Lastly, the double nozzles on a swivel are what I use for spraying shrubs, hedges, short trees and nursery stock. I have the discs from DCER-2 all the way up to DCER-8 and the matching cores. Cone angle, volume and hollow or solid cone patterns are all determined by which disc and core are installed. This set up sprays a very high pressure mist that penetrates dense foliage and due to the adjustable angle of the spray head, it is easy to spray under leaves.

Click to expand...

Hogjaw
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*Where have all the leaders gone? Lee Iacocca

Yes they do allow the connections to swivel freely. It is good for the connection between the hose and the hand valve to prevent twisting of the hose. But what I forgot to shoot was the locking jig that I put on the boom to hold it fixed. This is no problem for my tree and shrub wand because I want to be able to twist it into position to spray under leaves or over into the new shoots.

Attached is the walking boom that I use for turf and bare ground applications. I normally use AI nozzles in the boom. The next photo is the Solo 433 power sprayer and the 23L 7676-24 gun, with pressure regulator. That is what I use if the area is small or I am "spot treating". There is an XR Teejet fan tip on the end of the wand. Lastly, the double nozzles on a swivel are what I use for spraying shrubs, hedges, short trees and nursery stock. I have the discs from DCER-2 all the way up to DCER-8 and the matching cores. Cone angle, volume and hollow or solid cone patterns are all determined by which disc and core are installed. This set up sprays a very high pressure mist that penetrates dense foliage and due to the adjustable angle of the spray head, it is easy to spray under leaves.

Click to expand...

GD
When you are blanket spraying with the boom how do you keep track and prevent missed spots or overlap?